The moral of the story

In a few weeks I will be celebrating my 14th wedding anniversary.  I remember how excited I was when I was registering for wedding gifts at ZCMI.  It was so fun to be picking colors and designs and patterns and planning how I would like to decorate my home.  Then came the reality that getting married just after Christmas, away from most of my friends and family no less, means getting the shaft when it comes to wedding presents.  Sorry, that probably sounds really cynical and selfish - I guess because it's true...

Then came the reality that my tastes have changed quite a bit from the 22 year old, still in college, 90's bride that I was with lots of jewel tones like forest green, burgundy, and navy blue in my color palette.

Next comes children.  Need I say more?  I didn't have that much in the way of nice furniture, housewares and such to begin with, but what little I had quickly got trashed - some literally, some figuratively.  Case in point:  I have always liked Dansk dinnerware and flatware.  I find it to be simple and elegant with clean lines and, for the most part, tasteful colors.  I had had my eye on a flatware pattern called Solara, but at almost almost $30 for a 5 piece place setting it was a little out of my price range.  Imagine my delight when a few years ago while I was perusing Costco (after all, all things good come from Costco) and happened upon a 45 piece Dansk 18/10 dinnerware set for around $50 that was very similar to Solara.  I love having a spoon that I can scoop ice cream with!  It was all fine and good until I started noticing that pieces were disappearing.  In fact, you might say that I had an out of body experience when I realized that pieces were missing.  I went a little crazy....

Which brings me to the reason for my rambling.  My mother suggested that I try a company called Replacements.com.  After much searching I found my pattern, and would have purchased from them had it not been for Ebay.  I love Ebay!  It just so happened that I found a couple of sellers who had the pieces that I needed and voila!  I'm back to a complete set.  It cost me almost as much for the replacements as it did for the entire set, but that's beside the point.

The moral of the story is, don't let your children clear the table if you're using your good quality flatware.